Play Something Awful

Released in 2020 by The Vinyl Factory, Play Something Awful serves as a collaborative exploration of sound and visual art between the British artist David Shrigley and the French musician and producer Régis Laugier. The project emerged from a desire to blend Shrigley’s signature deadpan, surrealist humor with Laugier’s experimental electronic soundscapes, resulting in a record that functions as much as a conceptual art piece as it does a musical album.

The physical design of the record, cataloged as VF351, reflects Shrigley’s minimalist and idiosyncratic aesthetic, featuring the hand-drawn, scribbled illustrative style that has become his hallmark. By partnering with The Vinyl Factory, known for their focus on the intersection of contemporary art and music production, the release was positioned as a limited edition collectible. It was received by art critics and music fans as a playful subversion of the traditional vinyl medium, characterized by its lo-fi sensibility and wry commentary on the act of listening itself.